![]() Now place your hands over your “hip points” (technically, your anterior superior illiac spines-also referred to as “pelvic points” or “frontal hip bones.” These are super-important landmarks for yoga practice that we'll return to often during our Yoga practice.Īs you exhale, engage the muscle between your hip points (your transverse abdominis), drawing them toward one another. See if you can keep that engagement as you inhale. It's sometimes compared to a corset. Because the TVA is so deep (deeper than the rectus abdominis and the external and internal obliques), it's often outside of our everyday awareness.Īctivating Transversus Abdominus drawing lower ribs toward each other The transverse abdominis draws its name from the fact that its fibers are horizontal (i.e., transverse), wrapping around your abdomen. Transverse abdominis stabilizes and protects the spine-allowing us to practice asana, or even just go about our daily activities, more safely and more effectively. This leads to a significant chain reaction in the thoracolumbar fascia connected to the lower vertebrae. During contraction of the muscle, the navel is pulled inwards and both sides of the pelvis are pulled towards each other. The Key to Core StabilityĬore stability is in large part driven via the action of the transversus abdominis. Most yoga postures provide natural and balanced core strengthening. ![]() The muscles that provide core stability start as low the hips and legs, then the pelvic floor, some deeper abdominal muscles and some back muscles. By learning to 'awaken' and activate these muscles, your posture might be improved as these deeper layers affect not only movement but also structural support. As we advance in our Yoga we need to explore the deeper layers of our abdominal core like the transverse abdominus and the pelvic floor. Many people associate the word “core” with abs, but fortunately, there is so much more than that. Core strengthening is one of those fitness goals that we all know we should be doing more of. We’ll continue our focus on this area of your body over the next few weeks by working our way around the front, back and sides of your waist.Practically everything you do in yoga is engaging your core, from core-centric poses to moving from pose to pose, using your core to stabilize your body. If you feel something working around the front of that hip, those are your hip flexors. Then (without actually moving your knee) that you’re trying to drag your back knee forwards towards your front foot. Press your back foot down and see if you can feel the front of that thigh switch on. Bring that sensation into postures like downward dog, warrior 2 and warrior 3Ĭome into a lunge with your back knee on the floor. Put a yoga block (or book/ cushion etc) between your legs and squeeze. ![]() There’s an idea of what pelvic floor feels like! We’ve been building that into class by taking long steady breaths and at the end of each exhale drawing pelvic floor and lower belly in and up a little ![]() ![]() Imagine you were on the loo doing a wee and you wanted to stop partway through. Feel muscles in your back fire up to lift you Lie on your front and lift your head, chest and legs away from the floor. Within the flow of each class, here are some ways we’ve been trying to feel those parts of your body: And we’re starting this topic this week by trying to access some of the deepest muscles of your core: some that run alongside your spine your pelvic floor some deep (and high up) inner thigh muscles and your hip flexors (see second image). Since your torso isn’t flat, it’s more cylinder shaped (see first image here), we’ll instead be trying to take a more balanced approach by feeling muscles in your front, back and sides. That’s normal! I think that could be at least in part because people’s experience of their core muscles can sometimes be just the bit you feel when you do sit ups. Trying to feel and use the muscles in and around your waistlineįocusing on breathing, which is core to this discipline (and to me is one of the things that differentiates a physical yoga practice from lots of other exercise disciplines).Īs I’ve been announcing in class that we’re going to be looking at core there have been a few groans. ![]()
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